Officials reported today that Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not spoken or been seen in public since his appointment on the weekend, is hurt but “safe.”
“I heard that Mr. Mojtaba Khamenei had been hurt.” Yousef Pezeshkian, the son of the Iranian president, posted on his Telegram channel, “I asked some friends who had connections.”
“They told me that, thank God, he is safe and sound,” Pezeshkian, who is a government advisor, said.
According to AFP, Khamenei was named Iran’s supreme leader on Sunday to take over for his father Ali, who was killed in an air strike at the opening of the US-Israeli assault against the Islamic Republic on February 28.
“He was also there and got hurt in that bombing, but I haven’t seen that in the news outside of Iran,” Alireza Salarian, Iran’s ambassador to Cyprus, told The Guardian UK today.
Iranian officials said that the strike on the compound in central Tehran also killed other members of the Khamenei family, such as Mojtaba’s mother and wife.
There had been more and more worries regarding Mojtaba Khamenei’s health, and some people even thought he might have perished with his family.
State TV had labeled him a “wounded veteran of the Ramadan war” without giving any details. This was in reference to the conflict that started during the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims.
His portrait has been on huge billboards in Tehran, one of which shows him symbolically getting the national flag from his father Ali while the first leader of the Islamic Republic, Ruhollah Khomeini, watches.
Thousands of pro-government protesters waved posters of him at a massive gathering in central Tehran on Monday.
But people in the capital have also been yelling “Death to Mojtaba!” at night, which shows how much they don’t like him. He is thought to have been a crucial player in putting down waves of anti-government rallies since 2009.
Aim
The New York Times also said today, citing three unidentified Iranian sources, that Khamenei “had suffered injuries, including to his legs, but that he was alert and sheltering at a highly secure location with limited communication.”
The article reportedly heard from two Israeli military officials who said their intelligence services thought Khamenei had hurt his legs.
Analysts stated that the new Iranian commander-in-chief will stay out of the public eye for a while because the US and Israel immediately made him a target for assassination over the weekend.
Emile Hokayem from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said he thought he would “sit in a bunker somewhere for a very long time” because he watched what happened to his father, wife, and mother, who were all slain in the first attack.
“Definitely, killing him early is a top objective for Israel. Hokayem said at an online event on Monday that “if he survives, he becomes a totem, a testimony to the resilience of the system.”
He added he thought Khamenei will give national security head Ali Larijani the job of running the government and powerful parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf the job of running the war.
After Khamenei was nominated, the army and the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) both swore loyalty to him. The Tehran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Hezbollah armed group in Lebanon also did.
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, offered “unwavering support.”
Before he was chosen, US President Donald Trump said that Khamenei would be “unacceptable” as the new supreme leader.
Trump told ABC News on Sunday, “If he doesn’t get our approval, he won’t last long.”
Ali, Mojtaba’s father, had a partially paralyzed arm for the last half of his life since he was hurt in an assassination attempt in 1981.
An 88-member group of clerics chooses the Iranian supreme leader, who stays in office for life.
He is also a religious leader for Shia Muslims.
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